chickenpox
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the monkeypox outbreak an “emergency of international concern” in more than 50 countries. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the highest alert level that could be imposed in the event of a health threat in Geneva on Saturday. However, this has no practical consequences.
23.07.2022 16.52
Online since today, 16:52
The classification is intended to encourage member country governments to take steps to contain the outbreak. They are intended to sensitize doctors and clinics, take protective measures in suspected cases and educate the population on how to protect themselves from infection.
So far 99 cases in Austria
Tedros cited the number of more than 16,000 confirmed cases in more than 60 countries, many of which previously had virtually no smallpox cases. There have been more than 240 cases in six African countries where the virus has infected people. In Austria, AGES has reported 99 cases so far (as of Friday).
A committee of independent experts had not reached agreement on a joint recommendation on the declaration of emergency. The English abbreviation for emergency is PHEIC. This stands for “Public Health Emergency of International Concern”.
The WHO also declared the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus outbreak an emergency on January 30, 2020. This does not mean, however, that people now have to adapt to the same measures for monkeypox that they did for monkeypox. coronavirus pandemic.
Infection by close physical contact
While the coronavirus spreads through aerosols containing viral particles that infected people expel when they breathe, speak or cough, according to current knowledge, smallpox infections usually occur through close physical contact.
Depending on the disease, the WHO creates emergency committees, which have different specialists. In addition to the international CoV emergency since 2020, there is also an emergency due to polio outbreaks (since 2014).
Past emergencies have included outbreaks of H1N1 swine flu (2010), Zika virus (2016) and Ebola (2014 to 2016 and 2019). At the time, the WHO also convened emergency committees for Mers-CoV (2013-2015) and yellow fever (2016). However, the experts consulted did not reach the conclusion that an international emergency should be declared.